A particular way in which something is done, is organized, or happens:
- The pattern of family life has been changing over recent years.
- A pattern is beginning to emerge from our analysis of the accident data.
- In this type of mental illness, the usual pattern is bouts of depression alternating with elation.
- Many behaviour(al) patterns have been identified in the chimp colony.
Scrum is a framework which is intentionally kept incomplete. Scrum Does not describe tools, techniques and practices. They evolve as practitioners use them. Some of the practices become widely used and people find them useful. Whenever the practices become widely used we may call them “PATTERN” of how practitioners use them.
We can also say that Scrum is a set of patterns or practitioner experiences. Some of these patterns have been made mandatory. For example, Scrum consists of an event Daily Scrum. We can say that “Daily Scrum” is a pattern used by practitioners and most find it useful. Scrum therefore mandates that there be an event known as “Daily Scrum”. So, we can say, Scrum consists of a few mandatory patterns such as “Scrum Master”, “Product Owner”, “Developers”, “Sprint Planning”, “Daily Scrum”, “Sprint Review”, “Sprint Retrospective”, “Product Backlog”, “Sprint Backlog”, “Increment”, “Definition of Done” and so on.
However, other than the mandatory Scrum Patterns, we may use non-mandatory patterns in the Scrum Framework. For example, can we use a “Definition of Ready” as a pattern to define readiness of a product backlog item? can we use “Information Radiator” as a pattern to transparently display the Sprint Backlog?
The Scrum Community documents a lot of patterns on Scrum Plop website. These set of blog articles are based on Amit and Snehamayee’s experience of working in a Distributed World and still delivering large agile projects and making agile implementations possible in a distributed world.
Also many patterns emerged when people started working from home after the pandemic began in 2020. Agile still worked. Scrum still worked. So we can say, practitioners found a way out. These set of blog posts will attempt to capture certain experiences which have emerged after the start of the pandemic.
